Into The Crooked Place

by Alexandra Christo

“Okay, Mr. Thornton Walcott.” Krause leaned forward. He folded his hands together. “I’ll speak to Doyen Schulze and see if I can get her to sign off on this little agreement, but we won’t provide an underboss with an army. It would be a political nightmare, especially if we were to lose or you were to betray us and enthrall the soldiers somehow. This would be strictly under the table. Your people and your fight.”

  Wesley nodded. “Obviously.”

  “Then for all intents and purposes, I believe we have deal,” Krause said. “You kill Dante Ashwood and put a stop to his new magic and we’ll let you take his place.”

  He held out his hand and Wesley took it with a slow and wordless smile.

  He felt the ghost in his mind look on, thrilled and eager.

  So much blood to look forward to.

  Wesley kept hold of Krause’s hand and pushed her to the corner of his mind, far from this moment.

  He wondered, he hoped, that if he killed the Kingpin, she might just go away for good.

  SAXONY AKINTOLA DIDN’T USE her real name when she worked at the Crook, which meant that the only time she ever heard it was when she spoke to her family back in Rishiya and—if it was her father—lied about how moving to Creije was the best thing she could have done, because she was earning big coin and damn if those folks at work didn’t treat her good.

  All other instances were either from Tavia, who said it with a busker’s grin, or Karam, under the guise of sweet nothings. But Saxony winced enough times when Karam said it—because she hated how delicate her voice was then, like just being together smoothed out any rough edges Karam had, which Saxony very much liked her having, because rough edges kept people safe in Creije—that Karam stopped after a while.

  Now Karam avoided calling her anything. Not even pet names, which Saxony would have quite liked. And never her Crook name, which Saxony would have quite hated.

  She avoided eye contact too, but that was another story.

  So Saxony went by Brandy to everyone else, because that was what a lot of folks liked to drink and she found it a sturdy way to ensure tips, if every time someone ordered at the bar she came strolling over.

  Also, because House Wine was taken.

  This meant that Saxony had never heard her true name being said so many times, in such close succession, as she had on this day.

  Saxony, are you okay? Can you hear me?

  Saxony, let me help you.

  Saxony, have some water.

  Saxony, lay down and rest.

  She loved Tavia, truly, and she was grateful to be out of the amity precinct and back home, but she was also more than a little glad when Tavia finally left and allowed her to get some peace.

  Especially since Wesley had also been there, helping Saxony inside, then lurking in the corner as though he didn’t know how to act like a human in place of an underboss.

  Saxony sprawled across the sofa and rubbed her head.

  She’d healed her wounds some, but there was still a pounding in the back of her skull that hadn’t disappeared since she’d woken up in the amity precinct.

  It was starting to grate and it was why Saxony had barely moved in the few hours since.

  With a sigh, she cradled the crystal ball in her hand and from the dim glow, her grandma stared up at her.

  Saxony’s amja was old enough to have lived through the War of Ages, her scars mixed with the wrinkles and a smile that seemed a little sad in the light of day. Her hair was a wonderful dark steel against her skin, and her eyes were nearly the same color, polished by magic, gleaming with a thousand stories.

  She was Saxony’s favorite person in the world and the only piece of her mother she had left.

  “There must be more,” Amja said.

  “There isn’t.” Saxony winced as the pounding in her head increased. “I’m doing all I can, Amja. I swear it.”

  “But it isn’t enough.”

  Amja’s voice was strained and though she didn’t intend to be mean, though Saxony knew it was the fear talking, her words still cut like an allegation.

  “You have been in Creije for so long,” Amja said. “Sometimes I worry that you have become blinded. Sometimes it feels like we lost you when we lost Zekia.”

  Saxony’s heart pounded at the mention of her little sister.

  Zekia had disappeared three long years ago and it had been the catalyst for everything that followed. The very reason Saxony came to Creije. She had been noble then, at least somewhat, and innocent in a way the city hadn’t let her be since.

  Saxony had only wanted to find her lost sister and put together the broken pieces of her family, but she ended up staying for revenge and desperation.

  To spy on the underboss.

  To find out all she could about Dante Ashwood and his weaknesses.

  To make sure the magic trade could never hurt her family again.

  It was Saxony’s mission to keep an ear to the ground and protect her people from afar, watching as the crooks killed and betrayed each other.

  It was fine if they did, preferred even, as long as her people were safe.

  Perhaps everyone else had forgotten and moved on after the war, going back to whatever lives they could salvage from the wreckage of battle. They rebuilt and spoke of the past only in distant memory, like it was a bad dream and something that could never happen in their reality.

  But those people weren’t Crafters.

  They had not spent fifty years in the shadows.

  The old Kins still remembered. Saxony’s family still remembered, and their fight wasn’t over.

  “I’m sending tips to Schulze’s amityguards,” Saxony said. “They’re pulling buskers off the streets, just like they did with me. The whole thing has Wesley’s back up and if Wesley’s back is up, that means the Kingpin’s is too.”

  “You must be careful,” Amja said. “If Dante Ashwood and his underboss discover who you are, then you will be in great danger.”

  “I’m always careful,” Saxony said.

  And it was true, in a way.

  Saxony was careful to trust only Karam with her secret and nobody else, because Karam was a warrior whose ancient bloodline had always protected hers. And, after it became clear that Karam pulled too much of Saxony’s focus on her mission, she was careful to keep her at a distance. The distance wasn’t great, because Karam was still Karam and being too far from her got painful, but Saxony tried.

  She was also careful to time her tips to the amityguards rigidly, making sure Tavia was never out on those nights, or that if she was, the reports were for buskers at the other end of the city.

  Saxony was careful every day with everything, and everyone, but herself.

  “Tell me more about the elixir,” Amja said.

  “It was odd,” Saxony said, because she couldn’t think of another way to describe it. “I can’t put my finger on what was so strange, but it was different from anything I’ve felt before. There were voices inside my head, Amja, telling me to do awful things. I’ve heard rumblings that it could be new magic.”

  Saxony didn’t dare tell her that those rumblings were from Tavia.

  She had never, in the three years she had lived in Creije, mentioned her friend’s name. Amja could never know that Saxony cared for someone who sold dark magic and flirted with the lines of good and not-so-good. Saxony wasn’t sure what Amja would do with that information and she didn’t want to find out.

  Just like Saxony hadn’t told Tavia that she wasn’t just some girl who worked at the Crook, following Wesley’s every order, but a true Crafter, hiding in plain sight and watching over the crooks of Creije, biding her time for war to come again.

  Many Gods knew how Tavia would react to that.

  Saxony was lying to just about everyone and it was getting her just about nowhere.

  “If the elixir Ashwood has is new magic, then we are doomed,” Amja said. “If he is collecting Crafters again, we will never be safe.”

  Saxony didn’t want to think about it, but t
he idea that the War of Ages had been for nothing, that the suffering her amja and countless other Kins had endured was pointless, felt too awful to ignore.

  It had been fifty years since the underrealm trade organized itself into an enterprise, with the most powerful crooks sectioning off pieces to command, hoarding Crafters like trophies. Since they became Kingpins that the Doyens and their laws were powerless to stop.

  War was the only way.

  A great battle had spread across the four realms, even the non-magical Naustrio, with Crafters rising up and declaring war on the criminals who sought to exploit them. It was a fight that drove Saxony’s people to ruin.

  Those of her kind who survived vowed to stay in the shadows, shielding themselves from the world, but while her people hid, the magic trade still thrived on the charms they had left behind. The old Kingpins were replaced by new, more evil versions.

  Simran of Wrenyal.

  Aurelia of Volo.

  But not Ashwood.

  Dante Ashwood of Uskhanya, somehow made immortal by his sins, kept his position and his power.

  “I could be wrong,” Saxony said. “Rumors are rumors, nothing more. The elixir messed with my mind a little, like poison, but that’s all I can be sure of for now.”

  Amja nodded, her smile solemn. “Just be careful in your discoveries,” she said. “I cannot lose you too.”

  Saxony ran a hand over the orb, over her grandma’s face.

  “We’re not the ones who should be scared,” she said. “It’s them. They should fear us.”

  And she meant it.

  Saxony had already lost too much. She had already watched her mother and her little brother die when she was only a child. And then Zekia had disappeared. Her family was broken, her people were in hiding, and some days the world started to close in too fast for Saxony to do anything about it.

  Sometimes it felt like she had nothing to hold on to. But if she lost everything, surely all she had left to do was gain.

  And there was so much Saxony wanted.

  Peace. Justice. Revenge.

  “Amja,” Saxony began, and then someone was knocking—no, pounding—on her door.

  Desperate and loud enough that she was sure her neighbors would not approve.

  “Amja,” Saxony said again, as the banging intensified. “I have to go.”

  Before her grandma had the time to reply, she murmured a quick spell to break the connection and reached up to hide the crystal ball behind a box of old magic tricks in her cupboard.

  Saxony wasn’t sure who she expected to see behind the door, but when she swung it open to find Karam standing in front of her, her heart beat just that little bit faster.

  Karam was beautiful, as always, and very, very angry.

  “I heard you got arrested,” she said. “Who do I need to kill?”

  Saxony grinned and opened the door wider to let her in.

  She tried as hard as she could to push those old words out of her mind and focus on the dimple in Karam’s forehead when she frowned, but still, they echoed through her like some kind of spell. Over and over until there was nothing else left.

  Peace.

  Justice.

  Revenge.

  “YOU HAVE UTTERLY LOST your mind,” Tavia said.

  Wesley stood outside her house with a breath of hesitance and eyed her splintered door, which was basically a slab of black wood bolted crookedly at all the wrong places.

  It was safe to say that Tavia didn’t exactly live in the nicest part of the city.

  There were holes in Creije, big enough for people to fall in, and though they masqueraded as streets, the smell of magic gave them away to anyone who knew better.

  Wesley knew better, so it was not at all out of place for him to say that Tavia lived in a hole.

  There was a house inside the hole of course, but it was a hole nonetheless. Grouped in a small cluster of mediocre conversions by the casinos and bars that could never rival the addictive violence of the Crook. It was the dreary half of the city, across the bridge, with sandwiched shop fronts and lantern lights that carried a strange orange wash.

  The busker dormitories were flush and showy, Wesley had seen to that. They had high arches and dark-beamed ceilings, while Tavia’s place was less … well, it was just less. But she’d moved out of the dormitories as soon as Wesley took charge, probably because she couldn’t stand owing him anything.

  “You know, I think we should discuss your salary,” Wesley said.

  Tavia gave him a blank stare. “What’s there to discuss? Raise it.”

  “Nice try. Are you going to invite me in?”

  Tavia threw open the door the rest of the way, with enough force that Wesley had to reach out to stop it from slamming back in his face.

  It wasn’t exactly an invitation, but he followed her inside.

  “You could at least get a doormat,” he said.

  “You’re worried about dragging dirt into my place?”

  “It’s for when I leave,” Wesley said. “Who knows what I’ll drag out.”

  He meant for it to diffuse the tension, but Tavia just looked like she wanted to kill him.

  More so than usual.

  “Just hurry up and tell me what that thing at the amity precinct was about,” she said. “Did you get hit in the head or something?”

  Wesley unbuttoned his suit jacket and took a seat. “Is Saxony okay?” he asked. “Did you stay with her for long after I left?”

  Tavia frowned. “Nice job pretending you care, but just get on with it.”

  Wesley would never stop being surprised by how simply she said things, carving out the complexity of problems she didn’t like and getting right to the dirty roots. Removing the mess that came with living life, in favor of the simplicity she got from watching over it in judgment.

  “You know, there’s such a thing as tact,” Wesley said. “Learn it, would you?”

  When Tavia only stared at him, he sighed.

  “I was serious about what I said to Krause. The other Doyens have shares and interests in the black magic trade of their realms, but Schulze is too clean to play ball, so Ashwood wants a fresh slate. Next month, when the shadow moon rolls around, he’s going to use its power to amplify the magic of the Crafters he’s found.”

  Tavia looked unconvinced. “Ashwood will never be able to pull that off. He’d need—”

  She stopped, growing pale.

  “An army,” Wesley said. “Soldiers willing to die for the cause. Like you said, the magic gets inside their heads.”

  “And the sickness?” Tavia asked. “How can he build an army if they might die?”

  Wesley knew she was not thinking about Saxony then, but about her mother.

  Already gone. The dead do not matter. He will make you the world.

  Wesley shifted.

  He pressed his thumb against his cuff links.

  Not now. He wouldn’t let her in now.

  “The elixir is stronger than any magic we’ve dealt in,” Wesley said. “But I think most people can bear it. Besides, half an army is better than none at all.”

  “So Saxony was lucky to have survived?”

  That wasn’t the word Wesley would have chosen.

  “I’ve already spoken to the other underbosses,” he said. “I needed to see if Ashwood had given the elixir to them as well, so I could know how far it might spread. It seems it’s just my city for now.”

  “And that’s what you’re worried about,” Tavia said. “Your city. What happens to the rest of the realm doesn’t bother you.”

  It wasn’t a question.

  You don’t know what I’d do to win, Wesley had said once, before the girl in his mind became a ghost.

  He’d meant it then, but these days Wesley wasn’t so sure.

  It was true that the idea of any one person dying didn’t play on his conscience, but this was different. This was home.

  “I don’t think you know what bothers me anymore,” Wesley said.

&nb
sp; “I don’t think I know anything about you anymore,” Tavia shot back.

  That was fair, but it didn’t make the words sting any less. Wesley may have been terrible, but he was almost positive that he was not as terrible as Tavia thought.

  “You were right to want to take Ashwood down,” Tavia said. “We can’t let him infect half the city with magic sickness and use those who survive as his little warrior puppets.”

  Poor little orphan. His ghost laughed quietly. Ready to die for her answers.

  Wesley clenched his fists, stood, buttoned his jacket.

  “You’re not coming with me,” he said to Tavia. “I was giving you an explanation, not a job offer.”

  “Wait a minute.”

  Tavia propelled herself up so that her chin was level with Wesley’s chest. He cleared his throat and made to move past her, but Tavia sidestepped him.

  “I won’t stand around doing nothing while people die.”

  “This is Creije,” Wesley said. “People die all the time.”

  Mostly by your hand.

  Tavia sneered. “You know as well as I do what it’s like to lose family to the magic sickness, and if I can help stop someone else from going through that, then I will.”

  Wesley sighed and ran a finger over the scar on his wrist. Just a small part of such a large souvenir, from a childhood he was glad to have forgotten.

  Unlike Tavia, he wasn’t sad to have lost his family.

  Wesley had lived in Creije his whole life, but it was years before he saw the wonders of his city. For so long, he was hidden from its magic and cut off from its beauty, until he escaped and became a busker. He was born in Creije and then born again when he saw it for the first time as a child of magic.

  New life, new freedoms, new adventure.

  Wesley didn’t regret who he was now. He wasn’t plagued with doubt like Tavia.

  When he was a child, he never felt loved or safe. Wesley’s father warned him of the dangers in the realms enough times that feeling safe became a dangerous thing. His lessons were still branded into Wesley’s mind, on his skin, and running into the Kingpin’s clutches was a way for him to prove that he belonged somewhere, even if it wasn’t in his own family.

  Now there wasn’t even a family to go back and brag to. Like Tavia said, magic sickness took everything from everyone, even people like Wesley.